December 3, 2025
This World AIDS Day, an Oakland activist who has spent three decades fighting HIV is seeing a milestone he once thought would never happen: a first-of-its-kind AIDS memorial planned for Lake Merritt.
Longtime HIV advocate Jesse Brooks says the East Bay AIDS Memorial Garden, to be located within The Gardens at Lake Merritt, will honor the many lives lost to the epidemic and the generations who have survived it.
“I’m HIV positive myself, and I was diagnosed in ’93 … when people died,” Brooks said. “I got involved in research and advocacy, and now we’re finally here with the tools and education we need to get to zero.”